


words don't come easy

by Xeber97 (jungheesgirlfriend)



Category: Toy Story (Movies)
Genre: College, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Skype, there's also a snake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungheesgirlfriend/pseuds/Xeber97
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Andy checked the time. It was close to noon, which meant it was already the afternoon in Ohio, which meant Sid should still be sleeping off his shift.</p><p>Him being awake right now was weird, but Andy was more surprised at Sid actually wanting to skype him for once."</p>
            </blockquote>





	words don't come easy

**Author's Note:**

> I rated this as G but I use "shit" like twice in here. Hope everybody under 13 is okay with that. No beta, mistakes are my own.
> 
> The title comes from Mamamoo's song Words Don't Come Easy.

It was probably the hundredth time that semester Andy seriously considered changing his major to something more... structured. That’s the word. Structured in the sense that every time he sat down to do an assignment, he wouldn’t spend hours sitting at his desk, typing and erasing every sentence he came up with, then groaning because it was hopeless. The word document stayed blank. He had no good ideas.

Problems like this wouldn’t occur with physics or chemistry homework; the answers were just a few calculations away. A calculus professor wouldn’t just tell their students to create the next proof worthy of a Fields Medal. Granted, his creative writing instructors had never told him to be the next Maya Angelou or write something that could put Steven King to tears, but he’d appreciate if his brain didn’t spout out sentences that only E.L. James would find appealing.

 _Write about an emotion_.

That was the prompt, the big bad block in his road to completion.

His phone pinged at the arrival of a text, and usually he was a stickler for ignoring it while he was trying to write, but this prompt… he didn’t know what it was, but this prompt seemed hell bent on not being fulfilled. He tried describing a bunch of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and he even went the direct route with uninspired (until he convinced himself that it was sort of cliché and at least two of his classmates will have the same idea); he even attempted to write poems. Willingly. But everything he came up with sucked.

Huffing a breath of frustration, he picked up his phone.

_skype?_

… What?

Andy checked the time. It was close to noon, which meant it was already the afternoon in Ohio, which meant Sid should still be sleeping off his shift.

Him being awake right now was weird, but Andy was more surprised at Sid actually wanting to skype him for once. During his first semester at Long Beach State, every attempt Andy made to skype Sid was met with a considerably long wait for a response, which always ended up being a _Yeah_. But that wait seemed to instill a reluctant tone to it. Or, it sounded like that to Andy, at least. It also didn’t help that Sid didn’t have much to say most of the time, just nodding and “uh huh”-ing to Andy as he did whatever he was doing on the internet before Andy called.

Andy was surprised – a little put off, but in a good way. _Right now?_ he replied quickly.

Sid’s response was instant. _Yeah._

Well, okay then.

Andy closed the blank document without a second thought, glad he has never logged out of Skype for any reason. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt he should be somewhat embarrassed at how immediately he’ll drop anything to talk to Sid, but they were 2,000 miles apart. Long distance was, in Sid’s own words from a previous skype call, a bitch – and especially so after a summer full of sex and almost-nightly dates consisting of Pizza Planet delivery and Netflix.

It took seconds for him to start the call, and when Sid popped up on his screen, the first thing he noticed was-.

“I got a haircut,” Sid stated. Which, yeah, what used to be his chin-length waves was now a clean buzz cut, and it reminded Andy so much of his childhood, of those days when he watched Sid blow up his toys in the next yard over as he played with his own in his room.

But that wasn’t the center of Andy’s focus, or Sid’s either because he wasn’t looking at his screen.

“That’s, uh… cool? But are you going to address that snake in your hand?”

Sid gave a dampened smile. “And I also have a snake now.” In his hand sat a still mound of coiled up snake; it looked about the size of Sid’s palm and was mostly white, with large spots of brown and black speckled here and there. “My driver’s wife got a job in New York, so he’s moving there and didn’t want to move their baby snakes. So he asked if I wanted to take one.” As he said all this, he had placed the snake on his desk and watched as it slowly crept out of its tight coil, obviously suspicious of this unfamiliar human. He completely missed Andy’s incredulous expression.

Sid’s never shown any interest in reptiles before, or any type of animal for that matter. He had talked about his childhood pet Scud twice, one time when he recounted how the dog somehow survived a four-way bumper-to-bumper accident at a busy intersection, and the final time when he said Scud died when he started high school. Andy assumed Sid was close to Scud. Sid was the only person he’d ever seen come out of Sid’s house with the dog, even if it was just to let him use the bathroom, tie him to the shed, or train him to attack toys on command.

On one of their late nights in at Sid’s apartment, when they were binging episodes of _Too Cute!_ (read: when Sid was at the point of falling asleep where he’d finally let Andy pick what they watched), Andy had wondered about what kind of pet they would have together. Most likely a dog, since they both grew up with dogs and most couples got them as their first “baby” together, but Andy was more entertained by the thought of his boyfriend taking care of a kitten, or smaller things like rabbits and hamsters.

A snake had never occurred to Andy.

Watching Sid watch the snake, Andy said, “So you just got a snake? Just like that?”

Sid hummed affirmation. The snake was still unraveling itself, sticking its thin tongue in and out, surveying its environment. Andy was bracing for it to bite something or Sid.

“I actually got her yesterday,” Sid said, “Roger dropped her and her stuff off after our shift and I just let her chill out in her cage. This is the first time I’ve held her since.”

“And she hasn’t bitten you yet?”

“No, Davis. Ball pythons aren’t prone to biting.”

“As if I’m supposed to know that,” Andy mumbled while Sid continued.

“They’re super shy and gentle and stuff, so they won’t bite if they don’t have to. And he said she’s only around a month old, so she’d want to get away from me more than attack me… or, she’s _supposed_ to do that.” He raised an eyebrow at the snake, who by now had slithered toward his hand on the desk until her head was lying on it.

“She’s seems pretty friendly,” said Andy.

“I guess,” Sid started, scooping the snake up into his hands, “it’s just because I’m the closest heat source right now.” He turned her to and fro until he saw her head peeking out between layers of her body. “Her colors are pretty cool.”

Andy wanted to say that he was pretty cute there, but Sid would hang up on him, so instead he asked for the snake’s name.

Sid made a face. “Roger called her Peaches, but I’m thinking of renaming her. Something like Striker or Kraken.”

“No, don’t! Peaches is such a cute name for her.” Sid looked to see Andy grinning widely and huffed.

“Fine. So what has college boy been up to?” Sid asked, glancing at Andy. “Gone to any keggers lately? How are your frat buddies?”

Andy rolled his eyes. “I was just doing homework. Trying to finish something for creative writing.”

“How’s that coming along?”

The blank word document flashed in Andy’s mind. “Horribly. Surprisingly hard.”

“No need to be dramatic,” Sid said absentmindedly, making faces at Peaches. Andy started taking screenshots as he replied.

“I’m not, the prompt is just super broad, and I suck at writing about it.”

“What is it?”

Andy recited the assignment, and Sid scoffed. “Doesn’t sound hard.”

“Then why don’t you do it Sid.”

“I’m not the one in school, Andy.” Sid leveled Andy’s frown with a smirk, and Peaches was creeping her way up his arm. “It’s creative writing, just jot some shit down and call it art.”

“Believe me, I would if I could.”

“What’s stopping you? Your standards?”

Andy nodded. Sid has heard that complaint before, particularly on days when Andy wasn’t satisfied with the work he ended up submitting.

“Well, just write shit down and fix it later,” he said with a shrug, adjusting Peaches so that she was cupped in his hands. Andy took another screenshot. Sid would kill him if he found these. “You picked an emotion yet?”

“I’ve tried a couple.” He listed the few he wrote for and then said, “Everything I came with was either plain or cringe-y because it sounded so… bogus.”

 “Write about how you feel now. Can’t get more real than that,” he suggested with another shrug.

Andy considered this, staring as Sid handled Peaches, continuously adjusting his hold to accommodate how and where she wanted to move. There was a gentle disposition there, like Sid was intentionally trying to not upset the snake or make her uncomfortable and ensuring the first few inches of her was always supported. It made feel Andy nostalgic. It reminded him of the past summer.

They had spent majority of the time lying about on Sid’s couch or bed, basically being lazy bodies who reveled in the presence of each other. While Sid would detest this if Andy brought it to his attention, Andy knew that Sid wasn’t as callous as he wanted to seem. That image became impossible to believe after feeling Sid distractedly mess with Andy’s hair as they watched a movie, and seeing him struggle to entertain Molly’s talks about boy bands when he came to Andy’s house for dinner, and listening to him express how he couldn’t care less about what his parents were doing with the marriage that should’ve ended years ago, just as long as Hannah received more loving attention than he had.

A longing for the past summer struck Andy, and although he’s had small bouts of loneliness – what with being so far from home that weekend visits were nonsensical – he felt this longing ten times harder; and before he can even think about it, he said, “Do you miss me?”

Of course that took him completely off guard. Sid looked up from Peaches with wide eyes as if he hallucinated the question, and when Andy raised an eyebrow, like Sid did to him when he wanted Andy to say what he was thinking, he bumbled, “Yeah, of course I do,” while diverting his eyes.

The lightest blush took up Sid’s cheeks and Andy hurried to take a screenshot, planning to use it as inspiration for his description of homesick.

**Author's Note:**

> Boy, if you made it to the end, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> An entire summer of being unable to write, and I suddenly come up with this at 3 AM. I'm pretty satisfied with it (it's better than all the things I was 'struggle writing' for this pairing), and while it's not my first ever fic, it's way different (as in "actually completed and posted") from the other fics I have for another fandom. But I also don't like it, as I never like anything I write lol. I really struggled with characterization in this.
> 
> Uhm... I don't know what else to say except I have this (totally unsupported by canon) headcanon of Sid acquiring a reptile. (This most likely stems from my own newfound fascination with leopard geckos tbh.)
> 
> Anyway, it's 6:48 AM now. I'm tired and rambling. Constructive criticism is always welcomed, and I'm always looking for ideas to use for this pairing (that's code for "I'll take requests but cannot guarantee I'll fulfill them before you forget about them.") Thanks for reading!
> 
> you can find me on [ tumblr ](http://evaksbench.tumblr.com)


End file.
